“
Luna had decorated her bedroom ceiling with five beautifully painted faces: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville. They were not moving as the portraits at Hogwarts moved, but there was a certain magic about them all the same: Harry thought they breathed. What appeared to be fine golden chains wove around the pictures, linking them together, but after examining them for a minute or so, Harry realized that the chains were actually one word, repeated a thousand times in golden ink: friends . . . friends . . . friends . . .
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
“
There was something unmistakably exultant about the mess that Rosa had made. Her bedroom-studio was at once the canvas, journal, museum, and midden of her life. She did not “decorate” it; she infused it.
”
”
Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay)
“
The bedroom was as opulently decorated as the front room, with a bed large enough to hold six, and a wardrobe that should by all rights have contained a doorway to Narnia, or at least the deeper lands of Faerie.
”
”
Seanan McGuire (A Red-Rose Chain (October Daye, #9))
“
Her bedroom-studio was at once the canvas, journal, museum, and midden of her life. She did not “decorate” it; she infused it.
”
”
Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay)
“
The bed is just a decoration in a busy man's bedroom.
”
”
Michael Bassey Johnson (The Book of Maxims, Poems and Anecdotes)
“
Personally, I don’t mind a good cry. In fact, if I cry while chopping onions, I’ll run to the bathroom mirror and recite one of my favorite lines from Poltergeist: “Don’t you touch my babies!!!” It’s the part where the kids are being sucked into the bedroom closet for the second time and JoBeth Williams is at HER WIT’S END! It’s very dramatic.
”
”
Clinton Kelly (Freakin' Fabulous: How to Dress, Speak, Act, Eat, Sleep, Entertain, Decorate, and Generally Be Better Than Everyone Else)
“
There’s a huge difference between the writers, the musicians, the composers, the chefs, the dance choreographers and to a certain extent the tradesmen and the rest of society in that no one understands us.
It’s a wretched dream to hope that our creativity gets recognised while our family thinks we’re wasting our time when the lawn needs mowing, the deck needs painting and the bedroom needs decorating.
It’s acceptable to go into the garage to tinker about with a motorbike, but it’s a waste of a good Sunday afternoon if you go into the garage and practice your guitar, or sit in your study attempting to capture words that have been floating around your brain forever.
No one understands us
”
”
Karl Wiggins (Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe)
“
It’s amazing how dramatically life can change while your bedroom decor stays exactly the same.
”
”
Lauren Miller
“
But even while Rome is burning, there’s somehow time for shopping at IKEA. Social imperatives are a merciless bitch. Everyone is attempting to buy what no one can sell. See, when I moved out of the house earlier this week, trawling my many personal belongings in large bins and boxes and fifty-gallon garbage bags, my first inclination was, of course, to purchase the things I still “needed” for my new place. You know, the basics: food, hygiene products, a shower curtain, towels, a bed, and umm … oh, I need a couch and a matching leather chair and a love seat and a lamp and a desk and desk chair and another lamp for over there, and oh yeah don’t forget the sideboard that matches the desk and a dresser for the bedroom and oh I need a coffeetable and a couple end tables and a TV-stand for the TV I still need to buy, and don’t these look nice, whadda you call ’em, throat pillows? Oh, throw pillows. Well that makes more sense. And now that I think about it I’m going to want my apartment to be “my style,” you know: my own motif, so I need certain decoratives to spruce up the decor, but wait, what is my style exactly, and do these stainless-steel picture frames embody that particular style? Does this replica Matisse sketch accurately capture my edgy-but-professional vibe? Exactly how “edgy” am I? What espresso maker defines me as a man? Does the fact that I’m even asking these questions mean I lack the dangling brass pendulum that’d make me a “man’s man”? How many plates/cups/bowls/spoons should a man own? I guess I need a diningroom table too, right? And a rug for the entryway and bathroom rugs (bath mats?) and what about that one thing, that thing that’s like a rug but longer? Yeah, a runner; I need one of those, and I’m also going to need…
”
”
Joshua Fields Millburn (Everything That Remains: A Memoir by The Minimalists)
“
No amount of fancy decor will make the slightest bit of difference to your ability to sleep soundly if you do not take heed of what you do before you get anywhere near your bedroom. Only once this has been addressed, can this room become one of your most powerful allies in pursuit of wellbeing, happiness and good health.
”
”
Michelle Ogundehin (Happy Inside: How to harness the power of home for health and happiness)
“
It looked like Walt Disney had married a pimp and they couldn’t agree on how to decorate their bedroom.
”
”
Charlotte Abel (Finding Valor (Channie, #3))
“
Keir had never suspected it was possible for a woman to wear so much clothing. After they'd gone to Merritt's bedroom, he'd unfastened the back of her velvet dress and she'd stepped out of it to reveal a profusion of... Christ, he didn't know the names for them... frilly lace-trimmed undergarments that fastened with tiny hooks, ribbons, and buttons. They reminded him of the illustrations pasted on the walls of the Islay baker's shop, of wedding cakes decorated with sugar lace and marzipan pearls, and flowers made of icing. He adored the sight of her in all those pretty feminine things.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Disguise (The Ravenels, #7))
“
She loved her room. She had window seats and shutters, flowered wallpaper, and a bed with too many pillows. Her mother called the decor "romance and drama," and said the room looked like it belonged to a fairy princess.
”
”
Lynne Ewing (Goddess of the Night)
“
The flat was large and airy, sparsely furnished with sleek, modern pieces; no walls separated living spaces, except the bedroom. Vintage posters advertising the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Grand Prix de Monaco decorated the walls. There was a picture of Steve McQueen, leaning against his famous Ford Mustang, and another of Carroll Shelby, the legendary American automaker going face-to-face with Enzo Ferrari, his even more legendary Italian counterpart.
”
”
Christopher Reich (The Take (Simon Riske, #1))
“
Contemporary Residential decorating Ideas for home
Different ideas to decorate your bedroom The bedroom is the most cherished place in our home. It is the dream of every common man to live in a well decorated and well designed room.
”
”
Melissa Marsh
“
When no one was going to pay for the public schools anymore and they were all like filled with guns and drugs and English teachers who were really pimps and stuff, some of the big media congloms got together and gave all this money and bought the schools so that all of them could have computers and pizza for lunch and stuff, which they gave for free, and now we do stuff in classes about how to work technology and how to find bargains and what’s the best way to get a job and how to decorate our bedroom.
”
”
M.T. Anderson (Feed)
“
I turned my bedroom into a bat-cave of band posters, dark curtains, and the occasional skull. I think by now my distraught parents were seeking advice from their pastor. Andy, meanwhile, calmly remarked, “I like how you’ve found a way to use Halloween decorations year-round.
”
”
Molly Ringle (All the Better Part of Me)
“
During the first weekend Prince Charles showed Diana around Highgrove, the 353-acre Gloucestershire home he had bought in July--the same month he had started to woo her. As he took her on a guided tour of the eight-bedroomed mansion, the Prince asked her to organize the interior decoration. He liked her taste while she felt that it was a “most improper” suggestion as they were not even engaged.
”
”
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
“
She helps Holly and me to decorate the sky-blue bedroom with sparkly stars and a crescent moon painted in silver acrylic paint. We paint a wide, arching rainbow that stretches from one corner of the room to another. When my new baby sister looks up from her cot, she’ll see stars to wish on, a moon to soothe her to sleep, a slice of rainbow to remind her that magic is always just round the corner. I
”
”
Cathy Cassidy (Scarlett)
“
Her small bedroom was decorated with cheerfully embroidered samplers, which she had stitched herself, and a shelf containing an intricate shellwork tableau. In her parlor, the chimneypiece was crammed with pottery owls, sheep, and dogs, and dishes painted with blue and white Chinoiserie fruits and flowers. Along the picture rail of one wall was an array of brightly colored plates. Dotted about the other walls were half a dozen seascape engravings showing varying climactic conditions, from violent tempest to glassy calm. To the rear was an enormous closet that she used as a storeroom, packed with bottled delicacies such as greengage plums in syrup, quince marmalade, nasturtium pickles, and mushroom catsup, which infused all three rooms with the sharp but tantalizing aromas of vinegar, fruit, and spices.
”
”
Janet Gleeson (The Thief Taker)
“
It's a difficult path that we tread, us Indie self-publishers, but we're not alone. How many bands practicing in their dad’s garage have heard of a group from the neighbourhood who got signed by a recording company? Or how many artists who love to paint, but are not really getting anywhere with it hear of someone they went to art school with being offered an exhibition in a gallery? How many chefs who love to get creative around food hear of someone else who’s just landed a job with Marco Pierre White?
There’s no difference between us and them. There is, however, a huge difference in how everyone else perceives the writer. And there’s a huge difference between all of us – the writers, the musicians, the composers, the chefs, the dance choreographers and to a certain extent the tradesmen - and the rest of society in that no one understands us. It’s a wretched dream to hope that our creativity gets recognised while our family thinks we’re wasting our time when the lawn needs mowing, the deck needs painting and the bedroom needs decorating.
It’s acceptable to go into the garage to tinker about with a motorbike, but it’s a waste of a good Sunday afternoon if you go into the garage and practice your guitar, or sit in your study attempting to capture words that have been floating around your brain forever.
”
”
Karl Wiggins (Self-Publishing In the Eye of the Storm)
“
The interior looked like I expected. Two rooms--a main one and a tiny bedroom. Dusty stuffed fish and moth-eaten elk heads on bare walls. A wood plank floor that seemed as if it hadn’t been swept in years. Cobwebs decorating the ceiling. Furniture that would have been rejected by Goodwill. Mouse droppings everywhere. A few dark furry bat forms hung from the upper eaves. In the city, the place would have been condemned as a public health hazard. Here, it was just a typical hunting shack.
”
”
Kelley Armstrong (The Calling (Darkness Rising, #2))
“
My son was something of a disciple of flying things. On his bedroom wall were posters of fighter planes and wild birds. A model of a helicopter was chandeliered to his ceiling. His birthday cake, which sat before me on the picnic table, was decorated with a picture of a rocket ship - a silver-white missile with discharging thrusters. I had been hoping that the baker would place a few stars in the frosting as well (the cake in the catalog was dotted with yellow candy sequins), but when I opened the box I found that they were missing. So this is what I did: as Joshua stood beneath the swing set, fishing for something in his pocket, I planted his birthday candles deep in the cake. I pushed them in until each wick was surrounded by only a shallow bracelet of wax. Then I called the children over from the swing set. They came, tearing up divots in the grass.
We sang happy birthday as I held a match to the candles.
Joshua closed his eyes.
"Blow out the stars," I said, and his cheeks rounded with air.
”
”
Kevin Brockmeier (The United States of McSweeney's: Ten Years of Lucky Mistakes and Accidental Classics)
“
On Monday morning, she called me into her bedroom. Her dark hair was tousled, her light robe very feminine against the soft blue of her bed. Her eyes were full of mischief. “Oh, Mr. West,” she whispered in her beguiling child’s voice. “I’ve gotten myself into something. Can you help me get out of it?” “What can I do?” I asked, wondering who was next in line to be fired. “I’ve invited someone to stay here,” she said, “but now we’ve changed our minds.” She cast a glance in the direction of the President’s bedroom. “Could you help us cook up something so we can get out of having her as a houseguest?” Without waiting for a reply, she rushed on, her request becoming a command in mid-breath. “Would you fix up the Queen’s Room and the Lincoln Room so that it looks like we’re still decorating them, and I’ll show her that our guest rooms are not available.” Her eyes twinkled, imagining the elaborate deception. “The guest rooms will be redecorated immediately,” I said, and almost clicked my heels. I called Bonner Arrington in the carpenter’s shop. “Bring drop-cloths up to the Queen’s Room and Lincoln Bedroom. Roll up the rugs and cover the draperies and chandeliers, and all the furniture,” I instructed. “Oh yes, and bring a stepladder.” I called the paint shop. “I need six paint buckets each for the Queen’s Room and the Lincoln Room. Two of the buckets in each room should be empty—off-white—and I need four or five dirty brushes.” I met the crews on the second floor. “Now proceed to make these two rooms look as if they’re being redecorated,” I directed. “You mean you don’t want us to paint?” said the painters. “No,” I said. “Just make it look as if you are.” The crew had a good time, even though they didn’t know what it was all about. As I brought in the finishing touches, ashtrays filled with cigarette butts, Bonner shook his head. “Mr. West, all I can say is that this place has finally got to you,” he said. That evening the President and Mrs. Kennedy entertained a Princess for dinner upstairs in the President’s Dining Room. Before dinner, though, President Kennedy strolled down to the East Hall with his wife’s guest. He pointed out the bedraped Queen’s Room. “… And you see, this is where you would have spent the night if Jackie hadn’t been redecorating again,” he told the unsuspecting lady. The next morning, Mrs. Kennedy phoned me. “Mr. West, you outdid yourself,” she exclaimed. “The President almost broke up when he saw those ashtrays.
”
”
J.B. West (Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies)
“
Quote from "The Dish Keepers of Honest House" ....TO TWIST THE COLD is easy when its only water you want. Tapping of the toothbrush echoes into Ella's mind like footsteps clacking a cobbled street on a bitter, dry, cold morning. Her mind pushes through sleep her body craves. It catches her head falling into a warm, soft pillow.
"Go back to bed," she tells herself.
"You're still asleep," Ella mumbles, pushes the blanket off, and sits up.
The urgency to move persuades her to keep routines. Water from the faucet runs through paste foam like a miniature waterfall. Ella rubs sleep-deprieved eyes, then the bridge of her nose and glances into the sink.
Ella's eyes astutely fixate for one, brief millisecond. Water becomes the burgundy of soldiers exiting the drain. Her mouth drops in shock. The flow turns green. It is like the bubbling fungus of flockless, fishless, stagnating ponds.
Within the iridescent glimmer of her thinking -- like a brain losing blood flow, Ella's focus is the flickering flashing of gray, white dust, coal-black shadows and crows lifting from the ground. A half minute or two trails off before her mind returns to reality.
Ella grasps a toothbrush between thumb and index finger. She rests the outer palm against the sink's edge, breathes in and then exhales. Tension in the brow subsides, and her chest and shoulders drop; she sighs. Ella stares at pasty foam. It exits the drain as if in a race to clear the sink of negativity -- of all germs, slimy spit, the burgundy of imagined soldiers and oppressive plaque.
GRASPING THE SILKY STRAND between her fingers, Ella tucks, pulls and slides the floss gently through her teeth. Her breath is an inch or so of the mirror. Inspections leave her demeanor more alert. Clouding steam of the image tugs her conscience. She gazes into silver glass. Bits of hair loosen from the bun piled at her head's posterior.
What transforms is what she imagines. The mirror becomes a window. The window possesses her Soul and Spirit. These two become concerned -- much like they did when dishonest housekeepers disrupted Ella's world in another story.
Before her is a glorious bird -- shining-dark-as-coal, shimmering in hues of purple-black and black-greens. It is likened unto The Raven in Edgar Allan Poe's most famous poem of 1845.
Instead of interrupting a cold December night with tapping on a chamber door, it rests its claws in the decorative, carved handle of a backrest on a stiff dining chair. It projects an air of humor and concern. It moves its head to and fro while seeking a clearer understanding.
Ella studies the bird. It is surrounded in lofty bends and stretches of leafless, acorn-less, nearly lifeless, oak trees. Like fingers and arms these branches reach below.
[Perhaps they are reaching for us? Rest assured; if they had designs on us, I would be someplace else, writing about something more pleasant and less frightening. Of course, you would be asleep.]
Balanced in the branches is a chair. It is from Ella's childhood home. The chair sways. Ella imagines modern-day pilgrims of a distant shore. Each step is as if Mother Nature will position them upright like dolls, blown from the stability of their plastic, flat, toe-less feet. These pilgrims take fate by the hand.
LIFTING A TOWEL and patting her mouth and hands, Ella pulls the towel through the rack. She walks to the bedroom, sits and picks up the newspaper. Thumbing through pages that leave fingertips black, she reads headlines:
"Former Dentist Guilty of Health Care Fraud."
She flips the page, pinches the tip of her nose and brushes the edge of her chin -- smearing both with ink. In the middle fold directly affront her eyes is another headline:
"Dentist Punished for Misconduct."
She turns the page. There is yet another:
"Dentist guilty of urinating in surgery sink and using contaminated dental instruments on patients."
This world contains those who are simply insane! Every profession has those who stray from goals....
”
”
Helene Andorre Hinson Staley
“
My father had a sister, Mady, who had married badly and ‘ruined her life.’ Her story was a classic. She had fallen in love before the war with an American adventurer, married him against her family’s wishes, and been disinherited by my grandfather. Mady followed her husband romantically across the sea. In America he promptly abandoned her. By the time my parents arrived in America Mady was already a broken woman, sick and prematurely old, living a life two steps removed from destitution. My father, of course, immediately put her on an allowance and made her welcome in his home. But the iron laws of Victorian transgression had been set in motion and it was really all over for Mady. You know what it meant for a woman to have been so disgraced and disinherited in those years? She had the mark of Cain on her. She would live, barely tolerated, on the edge of respectable society for the rest of her life.
A year after we arrived in America, I was eleven years old, a cousin of mine was married out of our house. We lived then in a lovely brownstone on New York’s Upper West Side. The entire house had been cleaned and decorated for the wedding. Everything sparkled and shone, from the basement kitchen to the third-floor bedrooms. In a small room on the second floor the women gathered around the bride, preening, fixing their dresses, distributing bouquets of flowers. I was allowed to be there because I was only a child. There was a bunch of long-stemmed roses lying on the bed, blood-red and beautiful, each rose perfection. Mady walked over to them. I remember the other women were wearing magnificent dresses, embroidered and bejeweled. Mady was wearing only a simple white satin blouse and a long black skirt with no ornamentation whatever. She picked up one of the roses, sniffed deeply at it, held it against her face. Then she walked over to a mirror and held the rose against her white blouse. Immediately, the entire look of her plain costume was altered; the rose transferred its color to Mady’s face, brightening her eyes. Suddenly, she looked lovely, and young again. She found a long needle-like pin and began to pin the rose to her blouse. My mother noticed what Mady was doing and walked over to her. Imperiously, she took the rose out of Mady’s hand and said, ‘No, Mady, those flowers are for the bride.’ Mady hastily said, ‘Oh, of course, I’m sorry, how stupid of me not to have realized that,’ and her face instantly assumed its usual mask of patient obligation. “I experienced in that moment an intensity of pain against which I have measured every subsequent pain of life. My heart ached so for Mady I thought I would perish on the spot. Loneliness broke, wave after wave, over my young head and one word burned in my brain. Over and over again, through my tears, I murmured, ‘Unjust! Unjust!’ I knew that if Mady had been one of the ‘ladies’ of the house my mother would never have taken the rose out of her hand in that manner.
The memory of what had happened in the bedroom pierced me repeatedly throughout that whole long day, making me feel ill and wounded each time it returned. Mady’s loneliness became mine. I felt connected, as though by an invisible thread, to her alone of all the people in the house. But the odd thing was I never actually went near her all that day. I wanted to comfort her, let her know that I at least loved her and felt for her. But I couldn’t. In fact, I avoided her. In spite of everything, I felt her to be a pariah, and that my attachment to her made me a pariah, also. It was as though we were floating, two pariahs, through the house, among all those relations, related to no one, not even to each other. It was an extraordinary experience, one I can still taste to this day. I was never again able to address myself directly to Mady’s loneliness until I joined the Communist Party. When I joined the Party the stifled memory of that strange wedding day came back to me. . .
”
”
Vivian Gornick (The Romance of American Communism)
“
jangled. Would you look at that? A pair of open handcuffs dangled from my headboard. The key glistened on the bedside table, reflecting a sunbeam right into my aching eyeballs. I didn’t make a habit of decorating my bedroom with my work equipment, so I assumed that recreational use of my cuffs meant I had company. The best kind of company. I swatted it with a finger and
”
”
S.M. Reine (Witch Hunt (Preternatural Affairs, #1))
“
I had been assigned to a four-person suite in Wharton Hall, among the most popular and storied dormitories on campus. Built in 1903, it exuded quaint collegiate charm. Gargoyles depicting every season and the signs of the zodiac decorated eaves of the building. Wrapping around three sides of an expansive patio, Wharton featured some of Swarthmore’s largest dorm rooms; ours included two bedrooms and a living area that easily accommodated four work desks, bookcases, the glider chair, stereo tables, and an ancient, disheveled couch.
”
”
Kurt Eichenwald (A Mind Unraveled)
“
I called it the garden room because it had a white wooden bed, pale green carpet, and wallpaper decorated with vines and flowers.
”
”
Mary Simses (The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop & Cafe)
“
The large bedroom was crammed to overflowing with family relics, and examples of the various arts in which Lady Emily had brilliantly dabbled at one time or another. Part of one wall was decorated with a romantic landscape painted on the plaster, the fourpost bed was hung with her own skilful embroidery, watercolour drawings in which a touch of genius fought and worsted an entire want of technique hung on the walls. Pottery, woodcarving, enamels, all bore witness to their owner’s insatiable desire to create. From their earliest days the Leslie children had thought of their mother as doing or making something, handling brush, pencil, needle with equal enthusiasm, coming in late to lunch with clay in her hair, devastating the drawing-room with her far-flung painting materials, taking cumbersome pieces of embroidery on picnics, disgracing everyone by a determination to paint the village cricket pavilion with scenes from the life of St Francis for which she made the gardeners pose. What Mr Leslie thought no one actually knew, for Mr Leslie had his own ways of life and rarely interfered. Once only had he been known to make a protest. In the fever of an enamelling craze, Lady Emily had a furnace put up in the service-room, thus making it extremely difficult for Gudgeon and the footman to get past, and moreover pressing the footman as her assistant when he should have been laying lunch.
”
”
Angela Thirkell (Wild Strawberries (Barsetshire, #2))
“
Even an Astral Adventure needs a little sensuality.
"Perhaps you can show me how tastefully decorated your bedroom is." Lee probably felt I did not know what to do next and needed direction.
Maybe so, but I did know our coffee was going to get cold.
”
”
Scot Fin (Ralph and the Girl From Mayfair Towers)
“
Juniper was dreaming about riding Sparkles the unicorn to the white waterfall in the southern part of Wildflower Kingdom. Her room was decorated in pink and yellow, with lots of hearts and polka dots. Everyone else in the castle was also asleep. The wizard who did magic, the castle’s chef, the shoemakers, the castle guard–all were asleep. Even the castle’s one cat, Henry the Eighth, was asleep. Then, suddenly– Crack! Princess Olivia’s eyes flew open. Boom! Juniper’s eyes flew open. Boom! Crack! Kapow! Olivia looked around her bedroom, wondering what had made the loud noises. However, seeing nothing, she ran out of her room to find Juniper. Juniper also ran out of her room, clutching her stuffed llama, so that she could find Olivia. Princess Olivia and Princess Juniper were the only two children in Wildflower Castle, and so they were best friends. Sometimes they quarreled, and sometimes they were cross with one another, but when there was trouble, they looked out for each other. The two girls collided in the dark hallway.
”
”
A.M. Luzzader (The Princess and the Dragon: A Fairy Tale Chapter Book Series for Kids)
“
The first door she opened was carved with a picture of a pastry goblin tossing sweets. The room on the other side was even more delightful, decorated with apothecary jars full of colourful candies. The pillows on the bed all looked like sweets as well- wrapped taffy, gumdrops, and fluffy marshmallows. It felt tempting to lie down, just for a minute. She could almost hear the bed say If you sleep here, your dreams will be sweet, too.
”
”
Stephanie Garber (The Ballad of Never After (Once Upon a Broken Heart, #2))
“
So, do you like your new room?” My entire body froze. “What do you mean?” “The room you decorated. It’s your room now.” I swallowed. “For real?” He glanced at me. “No. I’m going to make you sleep on the couch.” “It’s for your guests. I don’t want to wreck it.” He looked bemused. “It’s a bedroom, Zoey. And it was always for you.” What did he mean, it was always for me? “It was?” “Why do you think I got you to decorate it?
”
”
Odette Stone (Home Game (Vancouver Wolves Hockey, #2))
“
Grandma made the bookstore look like a home, encouraging customers to treat it like an extension of theirs. The lower level is decorated like a parlor. Couches and tables are piled high with comfort genre reads and antique lamps. In the back, there is a children’s area set up like a child’s bedroom, complete with a tent that looks like a canopy bed that Georgie has been known to commandeer after hours. Upstairs a room is outfitted like a kitchen and filled with cookbooks on shelves and spilling out of the antique wood stove. Next to the kitchen area, a shelf was built around the window that looks out over Main Street and appears more like a nook in a garden shed than a bookshelf. Some shelves hold gardening tools, a mix of fake and real plants, and the rest hold the gardening selection, from coffee table books with to-die-for photographs of peonies to how-to guides.
”
”
Hazel Beck (Small Town, Big Magic (Witchlore #1))
“
I’m trying,” he calls after me, and I want to say, Yes, you are. He’ll get up in a few minutes, put his clothes on, and get in his car and head to his apartment a mile from here, the two-bedroom on the East Side that I helped him pick out, near the lake and full of light, newly decorated with inexpensive but decent furniture and blue rugs and lots of pillows, and far too cozy to be as temporary as we agreed it was.
”
”
Lauren Fox (Days of Awe)
“
Her name was Jane,” I said, and Olivia stopped walking. “We were together for two years, married after a few months. I was happy, genuinely happy. Even though she was human, and I knew I’d outlive her, I just wanted to enjoy the time that we had together. “It all ended on a damp November morning in seventeen eighty-two. I’d been away working for Avalon for a few months and had been eager to get home. I found her inside the house we’d shared. She’d been butchered. Her blood decorated our bedroom. She was naked and appeared to have been dead for several days. My rage was…terrifying. I buried Jane with my own hands, placing her near a field that we used to love going to. And then I burnt the house to the ground.” Olivia’s shoulders sagged, but she didn’t turn and face me. “I hunted her killer for a year. I didn’t care who I hurt to get the information I needed. I was so single-minded, so determined to have vengeance. Eventually, I discovered that her murderer had been part of the king’s army, which had been going through the area. “The killer was an officer by the name of Henry. No idea what his last name was. It didn’t matter. He liked hurting women, and once he’d finished with them, he kept their hair as a souvenir. The rest of his squad had waited outside while he brutalized and murdered the woman I loved. No one had helped Jane, and no one had tried to stop him. “I discovered that they’d been on training maneuvers the day of the murder, just their squad of thirty. And after all my searching, I found them and I killed them. They died in one night of blood and rage. All but one. I left Henry until last. I took him away to a secluded place and had my fill of vengeance. It took a week for him to die, and when he finally succumbed, I buried Hellequin with him.” The memory of Henry’s blind and bloody form flashed in my mind—his pleas had long since silenced because I’d removed his tongue. I hadn’t wanted information from him; I’d just wanted to make him suffer. Before he’d lost his ability to talk, he’d told me that someone had paid him to do it, but he never said who. No matter what I did to him, he took that secret to his grave. And after a few years of searching, I decided he’d been lying. Trying to prolong his life for a short time more, hoping for mercy where there was none to give. “I no longer had the desire to go by that name,” I continued, still talking to Olivia’s back, “I no longer wanted to instill fear with a word. I hoped that the legend would die, but it didn’t, it grew, became more…fanciful. “You’re right, I’m a killer. I’ve killed thousands, and very few of them have ever stained my conscience. I can go to a dark place and do whatever I need to. But for those I care about, those I love, I will move fucking mountains to keep them safe. And I care about Tommy and Kasey, whether you grant permission or not.
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Steve McHugh (Born of Hatred (Hellequin Chronicles, #2))
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It was always like this. Yes, the black-and-white debutantes of yore looked prim and proper and decorous and calm—like a row of carnations in white silk. But so did we, in our picture. In actual life there are no sepia tones. Call it the Unified Tastelessness Theory of History. In historic homes, people are always uncovering hidden layers of really hideous paint; James Madison’s bedroom was a wince-making teal. That statue was not the tasteful white you see; it used to look like Liberace on a bad day. There was a time when no yard in Ancient Athens was considered complete without a cheery stone phallus; they were like rude garden gnomes. Why would it have been any different in the ballrooms of a century ago? No one notices she’s living in a golden age. Probably if I’d been around then, I’d have spent most of my time lurking in the powder room, admiring the fractal patterns in the woodwork, catching up on my reading. If I were stuck at a dinner table next to Oscar Wilde, I would have sighed and wished myself back in time, next to Samuel Johnson. And so on, back and back and back until I ran into Dicaeopolis. In a strange way, that was comforting.
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Alexandra Petri (A Field Guide to Awkward Silences)
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I hear that among the younger generation couples sometimes maintain one large bedroom for husband and wife. I suppose that this is the hallmark of an intelligent use of space, and after all, the species must be propagated. Still, I prefer the older people's way of doing things: two well-appointed bedrooms, one each for husband and wife, an arrangement that prevents the revelation of so many irksome facts....
-Van Kamp's Guide To Housekeeping For Ladies Of High Society,
1899 Edition
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Anna Godbersen (Envy (Luxe, #3))
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Tree was lonesome, and the adjustment to campus life was not proving to be an easy one for her. She missed the intimacy of her neighborhood back in Columbia, where she knew everyone she passed on the street. She had the typical freshman sensation of being overwhelmed. The lectures were hard to follow, a lot of the terms and subjects were new to her, and she struggled to take notes at the collegiate pace. She tried to keep up as best she could, but it seemed like she was always behind. She studied for two weeks for her first biology test. She was afraid of failing. Semeka Randall, in the next bed, heard Tree weeping. Semeka slid out of bed and padded back to Tamika and Ace’s room—she was about to cry herself. She said, “Tree’s crying and it’s her birthday. We have to do something.” The three of them spent all afternoon planning a surprise. They bought a vanilla cake with white icing; they blew up eighteen balloons and decorated the back bedroom with them; they strung crepe paper, and ordered pizzas. Word got back to me that Tree was having a hard day. In the afternoon, I called the freshmen suite. I sang “Happy Birthday” to Tree, in my voice that was hoarse from yelling at her. That cheered her up some. That evening, Ace, Semeka, and Tamika acted like it was just another night in their dorm room. They talked about going out, and decided against it. Semeka said, “Let’s just eat pizzas.” Tree thought, “There goes my birthday.” When the pizza arrived, Tamika told Tree to stay in the front room. After a minute, they called Tree into the back. She walked into a room darkened except for a flaming birthday cake. It was the final icebreaker. Tree beamed. The three freshmen circled Tree, and began to sing. Semeka started first. But she didn’t sing “Happy Birthday.” She sang their favorite song from the film Waiting to Exhale. As Semeka sang a verse, the others joined in. “Count on Me,” they sang. Tree, touched, started crying again.
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Pat Summitt (Raise the Roof: The Inspiring Inside Story of the Tennessee Lady Vols' Groundbreaking Season in Women's College Basketball)
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mouth rendered decorative by a shade of lipstick which was new to Ione. For the rest, a plain dark skirt and jumper. As the talk about the tea-table went on, Ione began to adjust herself. There was no fault to be found in Jacqueline Delauny’s manner. She was pleasant, with just the right amount to say for herself, and she really appeared to exercise a tactful influence upon Margot Trent. If it had not been for Allegra, sitting there like her own ghost with no more to say than an occasional yes or no to a question too direct to be ignored, Ione would have found it all agreeable enough. As it was, she possessed her soul in patience against the moment when they would be alone. Allegra could hardly avoid taking her to her room or going up with her when she went to bed. She did not realise until afterwards that she had used the word avoid — not in fact until she was herself alone in her bedroom after the last good-night had been said.
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Patricia Wentworth (Ladies' Bane (The Miss Silver Mysteries Book 22))
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On the back were scrawled some words in red ink that read ‘Gadael ei ben ei hun.’ My mother recognised it as welsh, we didn’t know what it meant at the time. My brother and I weren’t very ecstatic about having it as a new house decoration, but my father loved its simplicity. He decided to put it up our bedroom.
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Anonymous
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Mrs. Brown, I hurried over as soon as I heard..." Ollie Clark ducked through the low front door and removed his hat as he noticed Lily sitting in the old rocker she had brought with her from Mississippi. His gaze stopped at the child at her feet. "Come in, Mr. Clark, have a seat. You've had word of Jim?" Lily’s breath caught in her lungs as she waited for the words she didn't want to hear. Ollie took the overlarge wing chair that had once decorated a bedroom parlor and wrung his hat between his hands. "No, ma'am, I didn't mean to get your hopes up none. I was talkin' 'bout Cade. The boys were just funnin' about him the other day. He's a drunken half-breed, Mrs. Brown. You don't want the likes of him about the place. Let me explain things to him and send him on his way. It ain't right for a respectable lady like yourself to have to deal with a man like that." "I can't dismiss a man without giving him a chance, Mr. Clark. Even drunk, he's showed more sense than some sober men I could name. If Colonel Martin could use him, I don't see why I can't." He took a deep breath. "He ain't even white, Lily. You'll give me permission to call you Lily?" When she didn't reply, Ollie hurried on. "He's half-Indian, half-Mexican. You'd be better off hiring one of your father's slaves. At least they listen when you whip them. Cade's more likely to turn and kill you. He's done it before. You've got to get him out of here." Ollie was speaking sense from his own point of view. Beneath his placid exterior. Cade undoubtedly had a violent temper. Lily had seen evidence of that already. And Ralph had told her he'd been in prison for killing another man. So Ollie was speaking the truth, but only one side of the truth. Lily knew all about that kind of lie. "I'll give Cade his chance, Mr. Clark. Jim would want it that way." Lily watched gleefully as she used this two-edged sword to make Clark squirm. How many times had she resentfully heard those words when the men wouldn't listen to her? Clark scowled and rose. "Jim wouldn't have taken on a drunken Indian. I'll set about finding you a decent man to help out. You'll be needing him soon enough." He gave the child on the floor another glance, one of puzzlement, but he didn't ask the question that obviously was on his mind. And Lily didn't answer it. Sweetly, she held out her hand and offered her best Southern-belle smile. "I'm so grateful for your concern, Mr. Clark. Please do come and visit sometime. Perhaps you could bring Miss Bridgewater. I'd be happy for the company." The name of the young girl whom the town gossip had Clark courting only brought a milder frown to his handsome face. "That's mighty kind of you, Mrs. Brown. I hope you hear from Jim soon." Lily watched him go with a sigh of relief and a small sense of triumph. She didn't know why Ollie Clark was suddenly so all-fired concerned with her welfare, but surely she had set him properly in his place. Now,
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Patricia Rice (Texas Lily (Too Hard to Handle, #1))
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The furniture and decor of a teen's bedroom can be a great way to make a unique look. We at Loft Bed Deals are offering full size loft bed for adult, teens and kids.
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”
loftbeddeals
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The rest of the house had a casual California boho-beach vibe, with its distressed wood floors, ivory furniture, and gauzy curtains, but the bedroom was very Zen. Decorated in a cool palette of sage greens and charcoal grays, with a floor-to-ceiling window along one wall that looked over a tiny tranquility garden of stones and succulents, it was my little oasis.
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J.T. Geissinger (Sweet as Sin (Bad Habit, #1))
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Interior Design and Decoration Kaspar von Morgenlatte did an admirable job with your apartment, but the look is somewhat outdated and more than a little disturbing. (If I recall, the design concept was commissioned by your husband in the early 2000s to evoke the Miami Beach bachelor pad of a Bolivian drug cartel kingpin. This was done extremely successfully. I particularly admired the “chalk body outline” mother-of-pearl inlay on the ebony wood floor and the trompe l’oeil “bullet marks” on your master bedroom headboard, but I think that it would be inadvisable to host a children’s birthday party here, especially while those Lisa Yuskavage paintings are still hanging.)
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Kevin Kwan (China Rich Girlfriend (Crazy Rich Asians, #2))
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Just to add to it all, Stassie’s dad texted me this morning to wish me luck. He said he’d found a bar showing the game, so he was going to treat himself to a beer—or five—after Julia made him decorate the spare bedroom. He said he’d be bragging to anyone who’d listen, so to make sure I play my best. I sat staring at my phone for ten minutes before I managed to type back a response thanking him for the support. Thankfully, I gave him a reason to brag.
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Hannah Grace (Icebreaker)
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Whitewash, a solution of lime and chalk mixed with other additives, was brushed on interior and exterior walls like paint. It took several days to set, forming a white surface that could be coloured with other substances; in some areas animal blood or vegetable dye was added to give exterior walls a pink colour. Whitewash was a cheap way of decorating rooms. More expensive options included textile hangings, wallpaper, painting and wainscoting. In 1817 William Holland was decorating parts of the vicarage at Over Stowey. His daughter’s bedroom had wallpaper, but he hired a painter for some of the woodwork, inside and out:
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Roy A. Adkins (Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods)
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that a person’s bedroom gives three kinds of clues to his or her personality. There are, first of all, identity claims, which are deliberate expressions about how we would like to be seen by the world: a framed copy of a magna cum laude degree from Harvard, for example. Then there is behavioral residue, which is defined as the inadvertent clues we leave behind: dirty laundry on the floor, for instance, or an alphabetized CD collection. Finally, there are thoughts and feelings regulators, which are changes we make to our most personal spaces to affect the way we feel when we inhabit them: a scented candle in the corner, for example, or a pile of artfully placed decorative pillows on the bed.
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Malcolm Gladwell (Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking)
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When she came to write her novels about Wells, however, it was Tower House that she used as their setting; all except for the bedrooms at the Principal’s House, which she remembered “were decorated with carved cherubs of stone or wood.” When I wrote A City of Bells I placed my family in Tower House but fetched the cherub population from across the road to be with them.23 A City of Bells was published in April 1936.
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Christine Rawlins (Beyond the Snow: The Life and Faith of Elizabeth Goudge)
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The reporters merely gaped. Dumb with awe, they trailed Rorke into a bedroom which was a decorator's dream: smooth wallpaper of softest gray, mauve gauze at the windows, a spread of royal purple velvet on a colossal bed, striking slashes of magenta and chartreuse in upholstery and overdrapes.
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Zelda Popkin (Time Off for Murder)
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I'd painted nearly every surface in the main room.
And not with just broad swaths of colour, but with decorations- little images. Some were basic: colours of icicles drooping down the sides of the threshold. They melted into the first shoots of spring, then burst into full blooms of summer, before brightening and deepening into fall leaves. I'd painted a ring of flowers round the card table by the window, leaves and crackling flames around the dining table.
But in between the intricate decorations, I'd painted them. Bits and pieces of Mor, and Cassian, and Azriel, and Amren... and Rhys.
Mor went up to the large hearth, where I'd painted the mantel in black shimmering with veins of gold and red. Up close, it was a solid pretty bit of paint. But from the couch... 'Illyrian wings,' she said. 'Ugh, they'll never stop gloating about it.'
But she went to the window, which I'd framed in tumbling strands of gold and brass and bronze. Mor fingered her hair, cocking her head. 'Nice,' she said, surveying the room again.
Her eyes fell on the open threshold to the bedroom hallway, and she grimaced. 'Why,' she said, 'are Amren's eyes there?'
Indeed, right above the door, in the centre of the archway, I'd painted a pair of glowing silver eyes. 'Because she's always watching.'
Mor snorted. 'That simply won't do. Paint my eyes next to hers. So the males of this family will know we're both watching them the next time they come up here to get drunk for a week straight.'
'They do that?'
They used to.' Before Amarantha. 'Every autumn, the three of them would lock themselves in this house for five days and drink and drink and hunt and hunt, and they'd come back to Velaris looking halfway to death but grinning like fools. It warms my heart to know that from now on, they'll have to do it with me and Amren staring at them.
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Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
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dressed, went down to the bar, ordered champagne, and caught a whiff of a familiar scent. He turned, looked at her, and seemed to be seeing her for the first time. Because on the previous occasion, however often she had lain naked in his arms, she had been an appendage of Erika. Tonight she stood alone, and he realized that she was actually the more lovely of the two women, with her soft yellow hair floating past her shoulders, her crisply handsome features, her slender, long-legged body so entrancingly crowned by the surprisingly large bust, so perfectly delineated by the décolletage of her pale-blue evening gown. ‘It is me,’ she said. ‘Oh, please forgive me. I had forgotten how beautiful you are.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘You forgot what I looked like, in three weeks? But that was a very nice thing to say.’ ‘Drink?’ ‘If it’s from that bottle, yes, please.’ She sipped appreciatively. ‘I had not expected to see you again so soon.’ ‘But you remembered what I look like.’ ‘Oh, yes. I remember every part of you. Or do you not like direct women?’ ‘I like you,’ he said. ‘Shall we dine?’ They ordered. ‘And have you come all the way to Berlin just to see me?’ she asked. ‘I’m sorry, but the answer is no. I came to collect this.’ He touched his Cross. ‘Oh, good lord!’ she said. ‘And I never noticed. The fact is, almost every officer in town nowadays has one of those …’ She paused, her mouth making an O. ‘I have done it again. Would you like to beat me?’ ‘I find that a most attractive idea. But it can keep until after dinner.’ He tasted the wine, nodded. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I suspect the reason so many officers in Berlin sport Iron Crosses is that the men who do not have them are doing the actual fighting. Except that we are not doing any fighting right now, are we? There is no one left to fight.’ ‘There is still the English.’ ‘Ah, yes. The English. But they are hiding behind their water wall.’ ‘They come out from time to time.’ He suddenly felt an intense dislike for this gorgeous creature, who knew so little about anything beyond the narrow limits of her sexual morality. ‘But I did not invite you here to discuss the war. I would like you to spend the night.’ ‘Just like that?’ ‘Isn’t that what you do? Or do you only do it with your girlfriends, and any company they may happen to accumulate?’ She gazed at him for several seconds. ‘In normal circumstances, I would slap your face and throw this glass of wine into it. But I think that in the mood you are in, you might hit me back, and I do not wish there to be a scene. Why do you not tell me why you are in this mood? You should be on top of the world. You have just been decorated – was it by the Fuehrer himself?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, then, you have been honoured above most men. I assume he shook your hand?’ ‘Yes. Have you ever met him?’ ‘Sadly, no.’ ‘Well, maybe the whole thing made me too introspective. I apologize for what I said just now.’ She shrugged, delightfully, and finished her meal. ‘I understand your mood. Erika has often spoken of you.’ He frowned. ‘Regarding what?’ ‘Regarding everything.’ ‘Shit! I beg your pardon. But she really is a … well …’ ‘What you just said.’ ‘It’s her I ought to beat.’ Heidi drank the last of her wine. ‘But I am the one who is here.’ By the time he had locked the bedroom door she had already stepped out of her gown. She wore only
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Alan Savage (Death in the Sky (RAF Saga #2))
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Imilchil Auberge Chez Bassou In the centre of the village 0668 564475, chezbassou.hotel@com. Budget minimalism with style, this pension has spotless bedrooms (most en suite) with just a blanket on the bed by way of decor. Traditional Berber cuisine is served in the sparse restaurant. Bassou himself is a qualified mountain guide, and can organize treks in
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Rough Guides (The Rough Guide to Morocco (Travel Guide eBook))
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furniture should never be positioned so that anyone has to sit with their back to the door or that the head of the bed should never be at the door end of the bedroom.
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Frida Ramstedt (The Interior Design Handbook: Furnish, Decorate, and Style Your Space)
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Noa sleeps with the curtains open, allowing as much moonlight as possible to flood her bedroom, allowing her to see each and every picture on the walls, if only as a pale glimmer. It took Noa weeks to perfect the art display. Reproductions of Monet's gardens at Giverny blanket one wall: thousands of violets- smudges of purples and mauves- and azaleas, poppies, and peonies, tulips and roses, water lilies in pastel pinks floating on serene lakes reflecting weeping willows and shimmers of sunshine. Turner's sunsets adorn another: bright eyes of gold at the center of skies and seas of searing magenta or soft blue. The third wall is splashed with Jackson Pollocks: a hundred different colors streaked and splattered above Noa's bed. The fourth wall is decorated by Rothko: blocks of blue and red and yellow blending and bleeding together. The ceiling is papered with the abstract shapes of Kandinsky: triangles, circles, and lines tumbling over one another in energetic acrobatics.
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Menna Van Praag (The Witches of Cambridge)
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We found the guest bedroom and I sat on the edge of the queen-size bed, bouncing up and down a little to test the comfort level. Definitely better than Shay’s couch.
The room had been decorated in a mixture of blues and grays that I found soothing. I could easily live in this room. My aunt was saying something about hand-scraped hardwoods and Italian marble, but I ran over to check out the large walk-in closet. I practically wept with joy at the thought of not having to live out of my suitcases any longer.
It was in that moment that I realized I would do whatever I had to do to become Tyler’s roommate. He wanted me to take care of his dog? I’d turn into Dr. Dolittle. He needed a clean home? Then I’d be . . . Marie Kondo? No, that was organizational stuff. Mary Poppins? She was the kid expert. Martha Stewart? More on the entertaining side of things.
An image and a name flashed in my mind. Mr. Clean! I would be Mr. / Dr. Clean-Dolittle. Practically perfect in every way.
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Sariah Wilson (Roommaid)
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The pleasure of a freshly-dressed bed is one of the finer things in life, and yet many stumble here, not sure what can go with what, or whether it's okay to mismatch pillows and duvet cover. The simple answer to this is that anything goes.
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Michelle Ogundehin (Happy Inside: How to harness the power of home for health and happiness)